iPhone Will Not Allow User Installable Applications

see here's the problem with a MAC phone. MAC has always been proprietary (non-standard) componants, and non-standard technology. They have come miles since back in the day when you couldn't even get TCP/IP protocal in MAC, a phone running mac sounds nice, but why would something that there are few developers even interested in making apps for appeal to the typical gadget head?

If i want an app that does (X) i can find about a million of them online for windows or the like. When and if i try to find one for a i-phone, what i expect to see is (limited availability) or MAC making the software at their extrodanrily inflated prices, with limited functionality.

I hope it does well but as an x-mac user i dont like to be limited, theres not a lot of people out there authoring software for mac, if you dont beleive this try and find a enterprise class accounting system for MAC, MYOB is about the max and to be honest i'm not impressed., unless it provides support for the load of MICROSOFT office products out there i cant see the reason for the expected HIGH price i would expect to see this lil puppy retailing around $500.00 +

YUK! i can get a palm treo for about $250.00 and install other 3rd party apps that work WELL, i will not be considering this, you can only stretch a i-pod so far before people start going *&^$ WHY?

You know ... there are correct comments on both sides of the iPhone "debate" here. I would't expect the iPhone to run a full version of OS X either - not yet. HOWEVER, this IS a huge opportunity to bring Apple's intuitive interface AND functionality to a now cumbersome cell phone world.

Why not allow Excel and Word - fundamental business apps on the iPhone? I don't need photoshop on my cell phone, but Word would be invaluable.

I already have approximately 4 stores on every corner of my city selling hundreds of cell phones - beautiful cell phones. And, many of them now have business apps that make my life more functional, e.g. Palm Treo. I don't need another cell phone gadget or widget that is only "prettier" or cooler than the Samsung on the next shelf ... I would hope this iPhone to be the most intuitive AND most functional tool available. My phone is not a toy - it's a tool.

If Apple misses this opportunity to seize the business traveler it's 1980 all over again and Microsoft will Reign king.

As far as it is presented on the S.Job's speech, the UI design is incredibly smooth, and it'd be unrealistic to think that Macintosh would let ANY Mac OS X native app run on the iPhone, which would logically ruin the whole UI design...
I agree specificaly developed widgets may be a first improvement - and you bet they will be a bunch, now it's true we can fear barriers again products that, simply, do not fit Mac related products - .avi files, etc. - that cannot be purchased through iTunes shop. This can be understood if S.Job wants to force the consumer habit through a nonetheless ultra-fashionable device... and get even more bucks.
On the other hand, this could create a new juridical case : European Law Court now obliges Microsoft to let the user easily access other media players than Windows Media Player (the basic installation somehow lets no other choice).
So the dilemma - regarding only Europe here - would be : are now mobile phones of some kind fully considered as computer platforms ? If so, other media players would have to be integrable in the OS X version of the iPhone... Because we clearly have the shape of a monopole here.

Without 3rd party apps this phone is a POS. I now can do more productive things with my Treo 700p then I could ever do with the Apple Phone. Every app on the Apple Phone is on my Treo 700p. I can sync, call, listen to MP3s and stream music and news (via pocket-tunes), play games, use pocket quicken and google maps..

WTF is steve smoking? He just made his glory phone a POS! Damn and I wanted a good reason to leave Sprint and pay more for a slower service.. DAMN YOU STEVE!!

BTW Steve.. What have you done for me today?

If it can't run the same or equivalent apps that I run on my MDA, then it's overpriced eye candy. I can customize my MDA to no end; including custom ROMs. I have VLC, TCMP, Skype, Adium, Doom, TomTom, Vito Navigator, Google Maps, MS Maps Live, MS Word, Excel, WiFiFoFum, along with a full keyboard. I can set custom keys. I can make skins. I can turn on things the phone provider turned off. I can overclock. I can encrypt my whole phone with 256 AES. I have the equivalent of LittleSnitch on it. The phone cost me $250 on eBay. T-mobile charged only $150 for deposit( bad credit) and I pay $80 a month for over 1000 minutes, free nights and weekends, EDGE data unlimited, free Hotspot access unlimited and I got coverage in Europe and other countries. How is the iPhone going to compete with that? Eyecandy!?

I'm sure this is just running the BSD/DARWIN kernel with a few other things thrown on top. Remember, DSL runs at 50MB for a full desktop. I also wonder about ROOT and privileges on the unit. As well as any kind of Firewall. If it's a functional OS and has no protection, it will be easy to infect. Will it be able to run an ADMIN account and USER account? I can't wait to see how many security breaches there are on this phone; especially with Cingular/AT&T/NSA handling all the data. Big Brother is probably listening...

But all in all, if it can't be hacked and I have to use Cingular, forget it. My MDA does what I want it to. Just not as pretty. Kind of like some girls I know...

Steve said right in the keynote that they designed the iPhone withouth buttons on it so that they could add all sorts of functionality to it later. Keep in mind, its still really just a prototype. Why would they design to have all that empty space below the widget icons if there were never going to have to ability to add any new features?

This is the first release of information about an iPhone. The phone itself won't be released until June. A lot can happen until that happens. The Apple development team and department is still new at the Apple campus. I haven't heard of a SDK being released just yet to 3rd party developers either. This is only the beginning.

I'm sure that we'll see some neat things come later with the iPhone, but it's not going to come out the first day like a Treo or a Palm phone. It's amazing technology, and there will be some bugs on this first version, but I think that it will be great enough to help bring the second generation of iPhone that will be even more impressive.

if the browser supports flash (nice to have), cookies, sessions and ajax (this is just a nice to have) then the inability to install custom applications might be a relative non-issue.

In fact limiting custom apps to web-based solutions would offer Apple the benefit of avoiding the CS nightmare of iPhone problems caused by poorly written third party apps, while at the same time offering users the benefits of having their data and applicaitions instantly available (and synced) everywhere.

No I personally wouldn't trust having a financial management app web-based, but other than that, most other apps could be web-based sfar as I'm concerned.

While I see this as an exciting, industry changing device; it is not for me. There is FUD all over about the features, or lack of them, but evaluation of some design points doesn't rely on a kiosk monkey or poorly written press releases of a pre-release model.

Battery is not removeable. This is an Ives design hallmark but this keep the device out of my road warrior kit--No removable memory--It is first generation--Overseas, I would rather have fon or DT as my provider.

Unanswered (for me) is the 3rd party apps. That must be determined when the phone is released--Also, and this is a biggee for the Asian market, hand writing recognition. If the phone does not support Ink with my finger than the input for text will not work for 3000 char Asian languages.

These last 2 point could still change before the device is released and I hope it does or we have another Cube.

I love the device. However, a reasonable smartphone, especially one that claims that the other smartphones are, in fact, quite lacking in smarts, needs to be able to be able to manage email attachments of common productivity applications (Office, Acrobat). Ideally, it would provide the capacity for editing, but, at the very least, should include functionality for opening and viewing.
Cheers
Ian Downes